Gadgetory

Blu's second iteration of the vivo air brings a similar ultra-thin design but this time with 4G LTE and 2 gigabytes of RAM so what's it like to use a phone with nearly half the weight and half the thickness of competing options this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my for review of the blue vivo air LTE when I first picked up the vivo air LTE I was expecting to have to insert a battery because of how light the phone felt in the hand making a mistake this phone is very light and 98 grams it's also the thinnest smartphone that you can purchase with in the u.s. at 5.1 millimeters the vivo air LTE is so petite that it doesn't feel much like a traditional smartphone it's unlikely to feel heavy after holding it for even extended periods of time and you may even forget whether or not it's in your pocket of course there's more to the design than just the small form factor the vivo air LTE is made of two glass panels housed together with an aluminum band both of these panels are coated in Corning Gorilla Glass 3 but I did notice that the back of my unit scratched pretty easily with normal use it also has the unfortunate tendency to collect fingerprints which may annoy some users these are really just drawbacks of using glass but I would still recommend using the included case if you want to avoid these issues as expected the glass construction does make the back fairly slippery in some use cases I found it difficult to rest the phone on my knee for example or set it next to myself while driving I consider these issues fairly minor and what's really important is that the phone doesn't feel slippery in the hand thanks to the smaller size I never had issues holding the phone with a single hand and never felt that I was going to drop the phone the aluminum band wrapping around the edges of the vivo air LTE is certainly a nice touch especially at this price point as it contributes to a very solid feeling phone overall applying light pressure does cause the phone to flex just a bit but I wouldn't worry about it bending in your pocket the power and volume buttons provide a decent amount of tactile feedback and as minor as it seems I really appreciated having both the headphone jack and micro USB port on the bottom of the device coming to the front of the phone you'll find a 5 megapixel front facing camera as well as a notification LED to the left although the amount of bezel may lead you to believe otherwise the vivo air LTE includes on-screen buttons it seems a bit disappointing that blue didn't use the extra space for capacitive keys or better yet reduce the bezel size the vivo air LTE s four point eight inch 720p Super AMOLED display looks excellent with great contrast deep blacks and very saturated colors although it does have a relatively lower resolution it still maintains a respectable PPI of 306 the smaller size is a major change from larger devices that I've recently been using but I do appreciate the smaller form factor for better one-handed use performance on the vivo air LTE has been mostly good thanks to the 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 this is a pretty substantial step up from the mediatek mt6752 gigabytes of ram which seems to have improved multitasking performance quite a bit if you're into gaming you'll find that the vivo air LTE is able to play most games without any major issues the adrenal 306 is on the lower end and that's reflected in some games where frame drops and slower load times are not uncommon just as you'd expect the vivo air LTE is carrying support for 802 11 and Wi-Fi GPS and Bluetooth 4.0 there's also support for some us 4G LTE networks with FDD LTE bands 2 4 and 7 unfortunately it's missing bands 5 and 17 480 and 12 for t-mobile meaning that you'll only receive 4G LTE speeds in certain areas during my testing for example I was unable to receive 4G LTE on the AT&T US network in my home coverage area perhaps surprisingly the rear-facing speaker on the vivo air LTE is very loud it does sound distorted and tinny however and I wish blue would I stood on the front of the device battery life was one of my major concerns before I started using the vivo air LTE in order to keep the device thin blue went with a 2050 milliamp hour internal battery which is a relatively low capacity during my battery life tests I found that the phone could last an average of about 16 hours with about three and a half hours of screen on time that's a relatively decent amount of time but I noticed that the test results varied quite a bit from day to day for example one day I got the phone to last for 14 and a half hours with 4 hours of screen on time only to be followed the next by 12 hours and two hours of screen on time all of these tests were conducted with Wi-Fi off for the majority of the day and screen brightness set to about 40% the 8 megapixel Sony IMAX 219 rear camera on the vivo air LTE performed well for the price color reproduction seems to be accurate and all of the images I took were considerably sharp and the right lighting conditions you can get some pretty high-quality photos I did notice some issues with automatic white balance however where the phone couldn't decide which color setting to use this was mainly an issue in brighter environments and setting white balance manually helped prevent producing incorrectly coloured images the default camera app provides basic control and is overall pretty easy to use the vivo air LTE runs a mostly stock build of Android 5.0 point to lollipop out of the box the changes I noticed include clear buttons in the multitasking menu a lock screen time widgets with an appended AM or PM and a lighter font for the time in the notification panel in addition to those changes Blue has also included the touch pal 2015 keyboard but I downloaded the Google keyboard shortly after setting up the device there's also a few power saving modes included out of the box should you choose to use them unfortunately it's unlikely that we'll see any updates for this device it's blue is notorious for their poor after-sales support although they are promising an Android 6.0 marshmallow update I have my reservations whether it will actually happen back in June they promised that they'd have Android 5.0 lollipop updates for the life--one and life 8 XL ready in july but blue has yet to deliver those updates nor provide an updated timeline whether they are still working on those updates is unclear but it does raise concerns on whether this device will ever see anything more than Android 5.0 point 2 for 199 the blue vivo air LTE is a competitive action available in either black or white starting on September 22nd well there is 16 gigabytes of on-board storage the vivo air LTE offers no expansion options this may be a problem for some users depending on where you store your files the blue vivo air LTE is one of Blues most compelling offerings yet and it's one of the better phones for under $200 it has an amazingly thin and light design great display and a very good camera however the 4G LTE support is limited the battery life can be inconsistent and it's unlikely that we'll see the device being supported with Android updates although I'd recommend a comparable device like the Moto G 2015 or even Asus zenfone 2 for the better 4G LTE support and software support you likely won't be disappointed by going with a vivo air LTE if you can deal with its quirks the Blu vivo air LTE is a good for under $200 thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you enjoyed it also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android